Spitz: Malaysia mystery and flights closer to home

Comment

Milford Daily News

Writer

Posted Mar. 12, 2014 at 12:01 AM

Posted Mar. 12, 2014 at 12:01 AM

» Social News

By the time you read this, there may be answers.

We may not know why cellphones were reportedly still ringing three days after the plane vanished. We may not know what caused the plane to suddenly disappear. But there's a chance we may know where Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is.

Or it may take far longer for clues to emerge, and clues may never fully explain, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what happened to the plane that has captured worldwide attention.

We may never know the story of each of the passengers headed from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, what hopes and dreams the trip represented, what led them to take that flight. And, for now, the stories we care most about are those that tell us something about what did, or didn't, happen.

But each passenger does have a story. Just as each passenger on a flight back from Florida late Friday night had a story.

The flight was from Fort Myers, whose Southwest Florida International Airport is only about 90 miles from Sarasota-Bradenton International, and 110 from St. Petersburg-Clearwater International, which is about 20 miles from Tampa's international airport. Which, in theory, though perhaps not in practice, makes for a lot of international travel potential in a relatively small space.

I don't know if there were international passengers heading for Boston that night. I only know many of us were watching the 11 p.m. news, on the TV screens embedded in the seats in front of us, and there's nothing like watching news of a missing plane when you're 30,000-plus feet in the air and you hit a few patches of turbulence.

It would have been a bonding experience, but the unwritten rule is not to upset fellow travelers, not to dwell on the what-ifs in mid-flight, not to do anything other than be stoic and brave.

At least that's my take on what fellow passengers were thinking. Of course, I don't know much about any of them, except the Italian-speaking grandparents in the front row had a way-too-big carry-on and the woman seated behind us told her family the wrong time for the estimated arrival.

What kind of scrutiny did any of us go through to get on the flight from Florida? Hard to tell. It's unlikely passports were run through Interpol, since "last year passengers were able to board planes more than a billion times without having their passports screened against Interpol's databases," the agency said in a statement Sunday, after it was revealed two passengers aboard the Malaysia Airlines flight were using stolen passports.

Having passed through seven airports in six states in the past four months, six times with randomly assigned "pre-check'' privileges, I can attest there's a wide range of what screening entails.

What kind of scrutiny do we really need, when the vast majority of us are law-abiding types just trying to get from Point A to Point B with our 2 ounces of shampoo and travel-sized toothpaste in tow, and screening lines long enough already?

Page 2 of 2 - While many recent reports discounted terrorism as a likely cause of the Malaysian flight's disappearance, reports it was several hundred miles off course renewed speculation about the possibility Tuesday.

As investigators search for debris, they also search for clues about the passengers and crew: Did anyone recently buy an unusually large insurance policy? Was the pilot's mental health OK? Was there luggage aboard that didn't belong?

As they sift through possibilities, the fact remains that air travel is remarkably safe, otherwise this wouldn't be global news and the investigation wouldn't prompt such cooperation among nations helping in the search.

And yet, with all the checks in place, a huge plane can still just vanish like the fictional Oceanic flight on TV's "Lost.''

No answers, no matter how rational, can make that make sense.

Julia Spitz can be reached at 508-626-3968 or jspitz@wickedlocal.com. Follow her on Twitter at SpitzJ_MW.